


The Machine

by Elliot Keenan (ElGallifrey)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-06
Updated: 2013-12-06
Packaged: 2018-01-03 16:30:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1072684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElGallifrey/pseuds/Elliot%20Keenan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a world where all disabled individuals are to be euthanized, Terric struggles to hide his nonverbal younger brother Merlin from the authorities while trying to give him the most normal life possible. When Merlin is taken, Terric gets more than he bargained for. The strength of his love, or his obligation, will be tested...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Machine

The lecture seemed to drone on forever. Terric adjusted his glasses, struggling to keep his eyes focused on the screen embedded in his desk. His head was heavy with sleepiness. He glanced at his watch, mesmerized by the gears chugging along. 

School lessons were pointless; every year the material was the same. According to the Institute of Education, Galactic History was now too expansive for mere students to grasp, so public schools settled for regurgitating the story of the Harmonian colonies. The tale went something like this: the solar system of Harmonia was discovered by a team of heroic adventurers in 2327, and colonized by the countries of the planet Earth as a diplomatic gesture in the aftermath of world war five. The infallibly peaceful and benevolent Interplanetary Fleet governed the colonies to ensure their continued prosperity. 

It felt more like propaganda than academics. He found it more interesting to learn about other planets and systems from old books in the library. They were at least a hundred years outdated – real paper books were now decidedly out of style – but they were better than nothing. When opened they heaved clouds of dust into the air, coughing and sputtering like a dying machine with each turn of a page.

#

New America was largely a poor planet, full of once-plentiful mines and exploited miners. Terric lived in a two-room apartment with his mother and younger brother. His father had been dead for many years, killed in a mining accident; his mother worked at a textile factory where she slaved at the manufacture of the latest and greatest synthetic fibers. Terric’s younger brother didn’t do much at all; the boy was eleven years old and had never spoken a word.

“Terry,” said his mother, gentle but with a commanding edge, “Go get your brother, okay? He needs a bath.”

He was always “your brother” – “Terry’s brother” – never Merlin. That was his name, even if nobody used it. 

Terric felt bitterness for his brother, bitterness he knew that Merlin did not feel for himself.

Bathing Merlin was a bit like bathing an uncooperative puppy. He squirmed and flailed his arms and thrashed incessantly against the sides of the metal bucket; it was all Terry could do to keep him in the bath long enough to scrub the layer of dirt out of his brown curls. 

They were in a corner of the combined kitchen and family room. Normally, they would warm the bath with hot coals from the oven, but there was always a risk that Merlin would knock everything over, so they skipped the burning coals and kept the water room-temperature at best. The boys’ mother made herself busy rinsing potatoes in the opposite corner of the room. Merlin’s howling continued.

It was illegal to have a child like Merlin hidden from the government. Terric and his mother were fairly sure that, if they took him, they would never give him back. The laws dictated that if someone was deemed "unable to contribute to society", they should be euthanized. 

Luckily Merlin was young enough that, on the few occasions he left the house, people didn’t notice his odd demeanor; and on top of that, he was small for an eleven-year-old. Terric felt a pang of guilt in his stomach. They could scarcely afford nutritious food. Perhaps that was why he seemed so underdeveloped. Yet their mother insisted Terric stay in school instead of working full-time.

After being washed up, Merlin retreated to the living room and sat placidly on the floor, rocking slowly and methodically. His hummed lightly, his pale blue eyes unfocused.

“Hey, Merlin, you want to go outside for a while? You want to go to the market with me?” Terric asked, knowing he would not get a response, but thinking it polite to ask anyway. The boy watched him but appeared to take no notice at all; his small, white face was still. Terric let out a soft sigh.

Merlin was growing. His body would be changing relatively soon, and then people would take notice if he blindly wandered off or, worse, threw a fit in public. Where would they hide him then? And even if they found a way, could they keep him locked up like a prisoner? Terric wanted to do what would make his brother happiest – but he didn't know what that was. He bit his lip hard. It frustrated him that there was no way to communicate with Merlin, to ask what he would want. Merlin’s time was running out.

#

They wandered among carts of apples and cabbages and bags of wheat and corn stacked on top of each other. Merlin seemed lost in the hustle of it all. His mouth made slight wordless movements. Terric held him close, partially hiding him under his woolen cape, and hoped that he wouldn’t draw any attention to himself. A few specks of ice dusted the cracked pavement and the cold bit at Terric’s exposed face and fingers.

Further down the narrow street, he could see women standing in front of the inns and taverns advertising their services. Terric made a point of avoiding them and floated along until he came across a merchant selling tomatoes. He inspected one, turning the fruit over in his palm.

“Three coppers each,” informed the merchant. “Grown fresh, shipped straight from the farming planet!”

Terric adjusted his glasses. “I’ll pay two,” he insisted.

“Two! These are imported fruits, you know.”

“I won’t pay more than two copper pieces for one of these,” said Terry, his voice firm in its convictions.

The merchant scowled, but seemed to be considering the offer. “I’ll tell you what,” he said, exasperated and a bit sour, “I’ll sell you three for seven.”

Terric inhaled deeply. It had been a long time since they'd had a good meal. He couldn’t even remember the last time he'd eaten meat. Tomatoes, too, were expensive; they didn't grow in New America. 

“Okay,” he finally agreed, rummaging through his inner pockets for the handful of coins he had taken with him. Terric relinquished seven copper pieces, picked out three tomatoes, and weighed them in both hands as he inspected each one. Then he put them in his rucksack. It wasn’t until the transaction was finished that he realized Merlin was no longer beside him.

Thankfully, his brother had not wandered far; he was standing merely across the road, peering quietly at a barrel of apples, but not touching them. Terric smiled.

He didn’t see exactly what happened, because he had turned his attention back to his pockets, but he heard the crash. A crate was knocked to the ground and its contents spilled across the pavement, and seemingly in the same instant, he witnessed the man rocketing past with another chasing after him.

“Merlin!” Terric called, but his summon went unheard; the boy was picking up the spilled apples, evidently trying to put them back in the crate. “No,” he hissed, cursing under his breath, but before he could act one of the merchants shrieked “Thief!” and then they descended upon him, circling the small and pale and shivering boy like a flock of bloodthirsty vultures. 

There was nothing he could do but watch.

One of the guards came and pulled the boy up roughly by his shirt collar. The tired cloth threatened to tear under the stress, but the man paid no heed; he inspected Merlin as if the boy himself was a piece of fruit.

“Not a thief, I think,” the uniformed sentry snickered rudely, “But an idiot. He didn’t come here by himself, did he?"

By this time Terric was already hidden behind one of the incinerators that lined the back alleys. He held his hands over his mouth to stop the visible puffs of his breath from giving him away. The guards were armed; he had no chance of taking back Merlin from them. It was all he could do not to get caught himself. His hands curled into tight fists, fingernails digging into the flesh of his palms. In the chaos, one of the tomatoes had rolled out of his bag and been crushed under the weight of his leather boot. Its flesh was smeared across the ground, red juice seeping along the cracks of the old pavement. 

#

The promise of a better life had slipped through his fingers like smoke in the air. He was indoctrinated to believe that freedom was a myth; that those books, the dusty old books from the library that spoke of other worlds and other times, were fairy tales. There was nothing else, and there never had been. The only worthwhile path to success was submission and the total acceptance of everything that had been taught to him as true and immovable.

Except that Terric didn't believe that. That was how he ended up standing before Azrael Park.

He was sitting in his cramped office, staring at the now-frozen vines growing through the ceiling, when Terric arrived at the underground base. Azrael was a slender, tan, and fairly handsome man with gold-flecked almond eyes and smartly cropped black hair; he was not excessively commanding, yet he exuded an aura of utmost importance. He was, after all, a head of the Harmonian Resistance movement.

“Mr. Edelstein, I presume,” he said as Terric walked into the room. “Terric, or – as your relatives call you, Terry – correct?”

“Yes, sir,” the young man confirmed, his gaze steely.

Azrael shifted in his seat. “Of course. No need for all the formalities. You can just call me Azrael. Now, tell me your story.”

“I need help from the resistance,” said Terric, sincere even though he had repeated these words many times before, “My little brother, Merlin, was taken almost three weeks ago. If we don’t rescue him, he’s surely going to be euthanized.” He drew out the last word, knowing Merlin's death, or the death of anyone the government regarded as small and useless, would be anything but a painless euthanasia. 

“And you’re going to pledge your loyalty to the resistance if we rescue your brother, correct?”

“Yes,” said Terric.

“Ah, excellent. I do hear lovely things about you. For example, that you were ranked number one in your school. And I heard that your father was killed when rebellion broke out at one of the mines.” Azrael smiled, twirling a pen in his fingers. “All the fatalities were officially recorded as accidental, of course. If you're anything like him, you could be a very valuable asset.”

#

Terric’s uniform was slightly too large. Of course, they only came in one size, so he couldn’t complain. He pulled the heavy canvas jacket on over his clothes, his old woolen cape resting discarded on his bunk. 

The Harmonian Resistance was the worst kept secret in the entire system. It was underground, of course, and its members formed a complex and twisted web, interconnected but invisible, like spider silk; it had taken Terric a good two weeks to find out how he could make a request to join it. Most people on the surface knew of it; yet, they did not speak of it, for it was not good polite conversation. Some even rejected its existence. They were sufficiently brainwashed to refuse evidence put before their own eyes. The government fought a quiet war behind the closed eyes of the people as they slept.

The base was his home now, and would be Merlin’s, too. Today was the day that they would bring him back. If all went well.

Despite Azrael’s acceptance of him, many of his peers were wary; he felt their skeptical eyes on his back and could hear them muttering amongst themselves when he passed them by in the cramped, narrow passages:

“Why bother getting back an invalid? Who cares?”

“Yeah, he’d be better off dead, wouldn’t he?”

“I don’t want that kid here anyway. Those kinds of people creep me out.”

#

They led Merlin through the tunnel, tugging the rope tied around his wrists as a farmer might lead a cow or a pig. He stumbled over exposed roots and rocky outcroppings, until finally stepping past several armed guards into the entrance of the base itself. 

A pillar of light fell over his face. When Terric laid eyes on his little brother for the first time in very nearly a month, he noticed first that he was extremely dirty. Merlin was coated in a fine layer of grime from head to toe, and dressed in rags. He appeared even scrawnier than usual, bones jutting out at his elbows and shoulders; emaciated and pale, his skin thin and translucent, he did not look up or smile or even seem to notice his surroundings.

“Hey, Merlin,” said Terric, softly. “It’s Terry, your brother… remember?”

Upon Terric's reception of the boy, the goons leading him jerked the rope roughly off his wrists and left. He nearly fell from the force of it, legs shaking from weakness. Acting preemptively, Terric gently pushed him down into a sitting position and kneeled beside him. 

“You’re okay now,” he continued, reassuringly, “I’m going to get you some food. Stay right here, okay?”

Something told him that he didn’t have to worry about the boy running off in this state, so he got to his feet and hurried to find some rations. Pitiful food, even in comparison to what they’d had at home, but at least something vaguely nutritious.

Outside the kitchen, his pace slowed to a halt and his mind took over. Now that Merlin was safe, he was free to admit it: it was strange that they’d kept him alive for so long.

#

The door to the infirmary slid open with an electric whirr.

They had been called to a meeting with Doctor Carr, one of the resistance's chief medics. Terric had asked him to investigate Merlin's condition, to see if perhaps he could be cured, but he had not anticipated such a swift turnaround. Merlin seemed to hate it, though; the sterile, artificial smell was intensified by the lack of wind underground, and it made Terric's nostrils burn. Even if he was the subject of ridicule about the base, it was a relief nonetheless to know that Merlin didn't have to be a secret anymore, and to be given a flicker of hope that the Doctor might be able to help him. 

Jeering snickers greeted them as they passed by, hardly even muffled by the constant hum of the air ventilators.

A nurse looked up from behind a desk, boredom etched onto her face, but before she could speak the doctor himself emerged from another room.

"Ah! Mr. Edelstein," greeted Carr, cheerily but a bit foggy, as if he had just been roused from a daydream. "And, Merlin as well! Very pleased. Merlin should wait here, I think. Come with me."

Reluctantly, Terric left Merlin in the care of the nurse and followed the Doctor into an examination room. Carr gestured grandly towards an empty chair, and Terric sat. 

As he did, the doctor cocked his head to the side. "Oh... your glasses, they're broken." He adjusted the round spectacles resting on Terric's face, curiously inspecting a hairline fracture that slashed through the right lens.

“Yeah, uh, they have been for a while,” said Terric, choosing to downplay the fact that they’d been broken for months and he had met with Doctor Carr many times since. It was worth doing so; Carr was a man of many eccentricities, but widely regarded as the most brilliant doctor working for the resistance.

“Oh,” the doctor mused, scratching his head. “Okay. Well, I’ve analyzed Merlin’s blood,” he paused again, seeming to be considering his words with particular care, “I believe I have found the source of his disability. And, perhaps, also the answer to why he was kept alive.”

Terric nearly jumped out of his seat. This was more than he’d expected. “What is it? And is there anything we can do for him?”

“Perhaps.” The doctor adjusted his own glasses, and cleared his throat before continuing. He spoke quickly now. “You see... Merlin is not just Merlin. Well, he is Merlin, but he is fused with another being.”

Terric raised an eyebrow, not following the doctor’s train of thought.

Carr elaborated: “A deep-space entity called Cnidaria Caelipsychus. Its larval form must live symbiotically inside another organism... Caelipsychus are extremely rare, but according to some accounts they can communicate with others of their kind empathically, even if they are light years apart. Their apparent psychic abilities are of great interest to the Interplanetary Fleet... they have been trying for many years to capture one for their research.”

“So... Merlin can’t talk because this alien thing is living inside him?”

“I’m not entirely sure,” admitted the doctor, “None of this has been proven, you see. It is merely speculation. But I believe that, as a host, Merlin may have psychic abilities given to him by the Caelipsychus, and is unable to communicate verbally due to this. Now, if the Fleet learns of this... and they may have learned it already... they would stop at nothing to attain those powers for themselves, I am sure.”

“But, is anything going to happen to Merlin?” asked Terric. “I mean – the Caelipsychus is growing inside of him, right? What’s going to happen when –“ 

“Not to worry,” Carr interrupted, “All evidence indicates that Caelipsychus not only avoid killing their host, but go out of their way to protect them. They are, after all, physically dependent on their host, so it is in their interest that the host remain healthy. Even after they are fully grown, they wait until the end of their host’s natural life span to separate, so that they are not hurt. But, if they are forcibly separated, then... well, of course, I don’t know what would happen."

Terric stared at his feet for a moment, brain reeling with thoughts, ideas, questions, anxieties – they blended together into one muddy, unintelligible stew in his mind. His heart beat against his head like a drum. “Okay,” he said. 

He had to leave this system, as quickly and quietly as possible.

#

Azrael awaited him outside the infirmary, a file tucked neatly under his arm. Terric assumed that he had already been briefed.

“First priority is to keep Merlin out of the hands of the Fleet,” he said decisively, “So, you’ll be leaving here a little earlier than I anticipated. I’ve arranged for transport out of Harmonia.”

“What about our mother?” asked Terric. “She lives on the planet. I left her to find Merlin, but she’s in danger now, right?“ 

Azrael clicked his tongue. “Yes,” he said, “If they found out she's related to Merlin, and they might, she might be in danger. But… look, Terric, I’ll be honest with you. We're putting everything we have into the war. We don’t have the resources to spare to transport an extra person halfway across the galaxy on a high-security mission. We need this to be as quick and discreet as humanly possible.”

Azrael’s face was emotionless, which infuriated Terric. “So you’re just going to leave her?” he hissed.

“I don’t have a choice,” said the Resistance leader, his gaze steely as ever.

#

He’d go to warn her. He had to. He’d tell her that everything would be alright; that he and Merlin had to escape the onslaught, but they’d meet again soon. That he’d come back for her.

But he never had a chance.

The two-room apartment heaved great clouds of smoke and ash into the air as it trembled, lashed and battered by tongues of flame. The entire town was coated in a black haze, still glowing embers floating freely through the air. By the time the response team arrived, Terric was told, all that was left was a pile of burnt, splintered timber.

#

The transfer was planned for the very next day, and there was nothing left to do but go. There was no point in wallowing; Terric had a job to do, to keep his brother out of enemy hands, and it was an important job at that. He knew it was what his mother would have wanted. Merlin was her son. He was all that remained of their family.

There was a knock on the door.

Terric opened it to find Azrael Park standing on the other side. “My condolences,” he said, “for your loss.”

“Thanks,” replied Terric dryly. He chewed on his lip and tried to keep his face blank, but his eyes burned with cool resentment.

Azrael offered a weak handshake, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a pistol. He pushed it into Terric's hands. “This is for you. You might need it.”

“Tomorrow?”

He nodded. “Someone may try to intercept our transfer tomorrow. We’ll fight to keep Merlin out of their hands, of course. If they somehow managed to get control of his psychic powers... well, we can’t let that happen. It would prove disastrous for the resistance. We will do everything we can to make sure you end up arriving on some other planet safely and without being followed. Just in case, here – it's yours."

Terric took the gun and turned it over in his palm, getting used to its weight in his hands.

#

He was floating through space, unfeeling and unable to control his speed or direction. Above him, or what he perceived as above, a vast expanse of stars stretching out into the edges of infinity; below, a dark abyss, the void of nothing and nowhere. 

Then there was a light – a sort of warm, rosy light – and he felt it radiating a surreal energy, felt its heat, like fire. When he touched it he felt a surge of emotion: sadness, loss, pain. It flowed through his body, coursed through his synapses, both in to and out of him. In that moment he wasn’t sure what the source of it was, only that there was a source, a being that he was now connected to.

The energy stabilized into long, airy tendrils, and then into a more general body-shape. The creature that was forming resembled a giant, insubstantial jellyfish, swimming through oceans of stars and galaxies. It had no eyes, nor any distinctly human features to speak of. Its form was nearly shapeless, reaching its highest point of definition at the end of the thin tendrils, where its feelers branched off into several spindly fingers that resembled hands. But at its core the creature faded into a cloud of vague pinkish energy.

Then he woke up, sticky with sweat.

#

The transfer ship was an inconspicuous civilian vehicle. It had been fitted internal modifications, including a warp drive capable of speeds up to warp factor eight. “We want to avoid as much attention as possible,” said Azrael. “Hopefully it will keep us out of trouble.”

“Yeah,” agreed Terric. But after how they’d dispatched his mother, he doubted that he’d get away from the Fleet without a fight. He could see the Azrael held the same doubts.

They shook hands and parted ways. “Good luck,” said Azrael, softly, so that none of the other men would hear.

He and Merlin left the base in the early afternoon. It had been quite a while since Terric had been to the planet’s surface; he found himself temporarily blinded by the bright midwinter sunlight bouncing off of the sheets of white, unbroken snow. Holding a hand over his eyes, he pressed on. Merlin followed closely behind. They had been instructed to rendezvous with their pilot about three miles away from the base; they had only a map to guide them there. Their prime objective, of course, was to lay low and make it there safely.

Their allotted path took them through the woods. The trees were unnervingly still. They thrust their gray, bony branches high into the air, silent and somber. Nothing stirred. No birds, no squirrels – none of the other animals that he was used to seeing in a swath of woodland. Terric soon came to realize why. Those animals were imported from the planet Earth and placed in their environments by the Fleet. The entire planet had been terraformed, but this place was so far beyond the established residences of New America that they just didn’t care.

Terric had his old cape on, the hood pulled over his head. He looked about warily; every time he checked, there was nothing beyond the trees. They were alone in the tall, silent woods.

Finally, they could see the pilot in the distance, standing at the end of a long clearing. The man smiled and waved, seeming a bit enthused about the whole thing. Terric’s biggest concern now was the bitter cold; his skin turned purple-blue under his fingernails. He longed to get inside the ship.

Before he could cross the clearing, though, the pilot called out to him. "Stop! I'll come over to you."

Terric looked skeptically down at his brother, and then back up to where the pilot was getting into his ship. He noticed something rustle in the bushes.

He whirled around, fumbling for the pistol Azrael had given him; but already he could see that nothing was there. He closed his eyes, took a long drag of air, and then shakily exhaled.

Still nothing. He turned back around, shivering slightly.

He thought it suspicious that the pilot was taking so long. Was he purposely stalling? Was he a double agent? Could he have been bought out? Terric wondered idly how much the government would pay to get their hands on his brother, and mused that the amount was probably more than he could even imagine.

His breath turned into puffs of ice as they hit the atmosphere. He watched each one billow out and fade into nothing. Seconds dragged on, seeming to become hours, maybe even days – still, they remained seconds. He counted them: ten, eleven, twelve…

He saw the pilot climbing back out of his ship.

Then a sharp crack split the air.

Terric felt a sudden burning, excruciating pain in his arm, and when he held his hand to it he realized his fingers were coated in blood. It wasn’t until then that he noticed the bullet lodged in the tree behind him. But there was no time to inspect the damage; he grabbed for the pistol, and this time his hands found it easily. Yet again, he could find no target. He tried to steady his arm.

Two more cracks, this time in quick succession. He saw the shape of the pilot in the distance crumple to the ground.

Blood dripped down Terric’s side, forming a small red puddle below him. He dove into the cover of the woods and huddled against a wide tree trunk. Now he could see the bullet had gone right through his arm, narrowly missing the bone. Jagged strips of flesh and snapped muscle hung freely out of the wound. He took a handful of snow and tried to put pressure on it, but he could feel the surge of adrenaline he’d experienced moments ago already starting to fade into fuzzy weakness, and he was queasy from the coppery smell. The silence seemed to have morphed into a series of otherworldly howls and whistles and wind sounded like static in his ears. Then another crack and warm blood splashed onto his face. Everything turned to black.

#

This was how Terric remembered his father: he was a kind man, exceedingly gentle with his two sons. It seemed to the young Terric that his father's patience with Merlin was infinite. Never once did he raise his voice. He remembered how he held Merlin as a baby, awkwardly cradling him in his too-big hands. He was a large, broad-shouldered man, but he had Merlin's soft curls and Terric's silver-gray eyes. He was intelligent, too; often he would sit with Terric and read stories out of books.

One time, when he was eleven years old, they were sitting like that, and Terric's father closed the book and looked his son in the eye. 

"Terry," he said, "I think you're old enough now to understand. Your brother Merlin is different from you and I. You'll both be around long after I'm gone, and one day, it will be your job to protect him." 

And Terric nodded, because he understood. His father smiled his warm, open smile, and he took a watch out of his pocket and placed it into Terric's hands.

"My father gave this to me when I was old enough, and now it's yours."

Terric turned the watch over in his palm, and saw the gears turning. 

"Hey, dad?" he asked, his voice small. "Do you think Merlin will ever learn to talk?"

Terric's father put a hand on his son's shoulder. "Terric, he already does. You just have to know how to listen."

#

Slowly, Terric opened his eyes. His vision flooded back. There was the pink energy again, except this time it wasn’t in space, but in the forest, on the planet, and he was still sitting in a pool of gore. But for a moment Terric found the now-familiar presence reassuring. Then he realized that it hovered over a small, pale body lying prone on the ground, the snow around it stained with red. It was his brother. His throat felt tight and gummy.

He reached his hand out to touch one of its tendrils. This time anger and fear flowed through him. For a moment he had wondered if this creature had come out of Merlin, but now he saw that this was another creature altogether. This was its mother. Perhaps it had been watching over its child from afar all along. The empathic energy surrounded him, burning cold as it did in his dream. 

Adrenaline rushed back into him, and he got to his feet. A howling wind blew around him. He felt the rage of the Caelipsychus; not just this Caelipsychus, but all of them.

He could see now two snipers being lifted into the air by another one of the tendrils. The Caelipsychus was huge, bigger than any animal that Terric had ever seen before. Bigger than a building. It thrashed about a bit, waving the two men around.

“Hey!” shouted Terric, still enveloped by the energy emanating from the creature. “You! This was their breeding planet. Wasn’t it?!”

“I – I don’t know!” stammered one of the men, flailing his limbs in a half-hearted attempt to escape from the Caelipsychus’ grasp. He was suspended a hundred feet from the ground.

Maybe he didn’t, but Terric did. He felt as if the whole Interplanetary Fleet was standing before him, as if he were addressing the human race itself.

“You took this planet and terraformed it for human colonization, without even thinking,” he growled. “And they didn’t even fight you, but once you found out, you just had to have them! Now you’re killing them. You’ve been killing them for years – dissecting, experimenting, wanting their power for yourself! Because you wanted money and power. Because you wanted real estate! And now, you know who you’ve hurt? My brother!”

The Caelipsychus lowered the two men and Terric expected it to smash them into the ground, but it released them.

Terric wasn’t about to let them get away. He picked the pistol up off the ground and aimed it squarely at one of the snipers’ backs, then pulled the trigger. With a flash of red, the man fell. The other continued on without slowing to see his fallen companion. Terric fired again, but the assailant scurried out of sight. 

At this point he started to feel tired, and he knew that he didn't have the strength to give chase. Still, he was enraged. He threw the pistol into a tree, leaving a sizable dent in it. Then let his legs fall out from under him.

“You let him get away,” he panted to the Caelipsychus, his disappointment tangible. But the creature seemed otherwise preoccupied, touching Merlin’s stomach with its tendrils. He could see the boy stir slightly, and crawled over to him. Though he hadn’t actually seen Merlin’s injuries until then, he knew the prognosis was bad. There was one tear through his stomach, and another through his thigh. Purple goo oozed from his wounds.

“Merlin?” he said softly, wiping the boy’s hair from his forehead. He didn’t open his eyes, but his chest made erratic, shallow movements. “It’s gonna be okay.”

He got the impression that the Caelipsychus was saying the same thing. They both knew it was a lie.

Then Terric's head started to swim, and he felt his body slump against the ground.

#

When Terric woke up, he was in the same clearing, but the deafening silence had been restored, and he no longer felt pain in his arm. For a moment he wondered if he was dead, but then he felt a throbbing pain in his forehead and he knew that he was alive. What remained of his shirt was stained red, but under it his skin was unbroken, pink and fresh. The right lens of his glasses was completely shattered. Specks of broken glass dusted his cheek. 

The next thing he noticed was that he was no longer freezing. The snow around him had melted to reveal a sheet of green grass beneath him; in fact, the entire clearing had defrosted. He also realized, as he looked around, that he was completely alone. The ship was gone, as was the pilot's body.

Overhead, he could see an ocean of stars.

“I killed someone,” he said to himself. “Who am I?”

#

The man behind the counter eyed the gold watch with expert scrutiny, holding it up to the light at various angles to get a good view of it. Its delicate gears chugged along as well as they ever had. Terric waited patiently, eyeing some of the pawn shop’s other acquisitions.

“Where’d ya get this?” asked the shopkeeper skeptically.

“My dad gave it to me before he died,” said Terric.

“Well, it's a very nice timepiece. I'd say it's worth about a thousand gold. I'd be willing to take it off yer hands."

Terric gave a firm handshake on the deal and traded the watch for a heavy case of gold coins. Then he left.

When he crossed the threshold into the warm spring afternoon, he was greeted by a hooded figure leaning against the brick. For a moment Terric didn't recognize the slender, golden-tan man before his eyes; then he realized it was Azrael Park.

He expected Azrael to demand he stay on with the Resistance. But he didn't.

“I'm sorry,” he announced, skipping the formalities as usual. “About what happened. You're leaving the planet, right? I'll cover your tracks. And I promise I will get revenge for Merlin.”

“Thanks,” said Terric placidly, "But there's no point in that."

Azrael raised his eyebrows in surprise. “What?”

"There's no reason to get revenge on the Fleet, because the Fleet didn't kill Merlin. We did. We all did. I can't take revenge against my entire race." 

The Resistance leader frowned, eyeing Terric with pronounced skepticism. "What are you talking about, Terric?"

"Greed," he said, "Is what killed Merlin. No matter how far I run, greed will always exist. We long to leave a mark on everything we touch, as if to reach through time and prove our immortality. Maybe it's because we fear our end. I don't know."

Azrael was silent, critically musing over his former comrade's grandiose delusion. He opened his mouth as if he were about to speak, then closed it again. 

Terric bit his lip. "Goodbye, Azrael." He turned to leave. In the stillness, he swore he could hear something in the wind; but if there were words, they were unintelligible to him. 

He remembered something he'd heard long ago: "You just have to know how to listen."

The only sound he could hear was his footsteps hitting the pavement as he walked.


End file.
